Oral history of 2010 gold-medal game

February 10, 2014

Page 13 of 23

Ryan Miller: "The guys were obviously enthusiastic, but the guys were also trying to get their focus back. It wasn't a celebration by any means. We were excited to get the opportunity. Maybe Whitney and, I can't remember, but someone else mentioned, 'Who's going to be the next Eruzione?' Or something to that effect. The boys got the message."

Patrick Kane: "I remember I was sitting next to Erik Johnson. We were kind of looking at each other, saying, 'We have a chance to win gold here.' It was pretty crazy. Everyone was excited. I think maybe to the point where we were too excited because it almost felt after all that happened and we came back from 2-0, tied it up in the late stages like that, it was almost a guarantee we were going to win it."

Jonathan Toews: "It was such a weird feeling in your throat and your stomach; that everything just dropped. Trying to forget about that and trying to forget about what you could have had if you would have killed off the last minute or whatever, it's hard, but you got to forget about it and move on."

Brooks Orpik: "I think the whole game we were pretty confident. Obviously, when you get to the last couple of minutes, when you're still down a goal against a team like that, I think you're definitely nervous that it's not going to go your way. I think when Zach scored that goal to tie it up and then going into overtime the way that we tied it up late there, I remember the mood in the dressing room; I don't think anybody thought we were going to lose after the way that ended in regulation.

"So, I thought the attitude, the confidence in the room, was really good going into overtime."

Brenden Morrow: "You're pissed off, initially. The first couple minutes, you're upset with how things went, what could have been. But then you look at the opportunity. If somebody had told us, 'You've got an overtime to win a gold medal at the beginning of the tournament,' who wouldn't have taken that? After you have that initial five minutes or so to reflect, we were thinking the same thing the Americans were. We were confident."

Mike Babcock: "It was great because the room calmed down right away. [Coaches] could tell because we were close enough to hear it. As a coaching staff we went through our structure, 4-on-4 and who was going to play. I went through it then with the players, our structure and how we were going to play. That took about a minute. Then I said to them, 'There's too much talent on the ice, this game is going to be over fast. One of you is going to be a hero for the rest of your life. Let's put our foot on the gas and let's go get 'em.'"

Ron Wilson: "We go to overtime -- we as a coaching staff. We didn't even know what we were facing. We started asking around: 'What are we doing?' We hadn't really investigated what happens. Then we're told, 'You've got a 20-minute overtime.' We're like, '20-minute overtime?' 'Yeah, they switch ends,' which you don't do in the NHL. 'You go in, they're doing the ice, you get a 20-minute overtime, sudden death, but you're playing 4-on-4.' So I was like, 'That doesn't really work to our advantage because Canada is very deep.' I knew if we get to a shootout, I thought we're going to win. We've got the three best shootout guys and you can use them over and over again, so we had Patrick Kane, we had Joe Pavelski and we had Zach Parise.